As a company, we’re a toddler: I’ve been working this new business full time not-quite-two years.

I remember my daughters at not-quite-two. They didn’t sleep through the night yet; they weren’t potty trained completely; they spoke in single words and short phrases, with lots of gestures. We had a lot of whining in the house.

When I remember that we are young and new as a company, I feel less worried about the fact that we don’t (or didn’t, until now) have an established vision, purpose, and values to hang on our virtual walls.

That changes now. Or starts to.

I have been working at defining our core values as a company and have identified six. I sent them off to some trusted advisers and shared with my team. There is (at least) one missing and I will likely refine over time.

Before I share the first value, I will share our mission statement:

As a company, Weaving Influence exists to make a positive difference by creating and optimizing opportunities:

  • For our clients, by sharing their ideas effectively to grow their influence and accomplish their big picture goals through the use of online tools.
  • For our team members, by offering meaningful, flexible work.
  • For our online communities, by sharing and promoting helpful, inspirational, educational, and life-changing content.

The mission is also a work in progress but encapsulates our mission as succinctly as I can, for now.

Our Core Values 

Our values guide our behavior, decisions, and choices. They highlight our differentiation from others. They are both actual and aspirational, describing how we operate as well as how we most aspire to operate.

One of our values is to partnership.

We relate to our clients as partners. To work with our clients effectively, we must develop strong relationships based in mutual trust and respect as well as effective collaboration every step of the way.  In most cases, we operate as an extension of our client’s internal teams, not as true vendors/suppliers.

Operating as partners, we are committed to our clients’ success and satisfaction.  We focus on staying in communication, anticipating needs and opportunities. We work to fix breakdowns quickly, by communicating openly about what is working and what is not as well as challenging each other’s thinking and expectations.

One of the most gratifying experiences for me so far in this business has been developing long-term partnerships with our clients. We have several clients that we have been serving for longer than 18 months. Most clients who work with us beyond an initial book launch will continue their contracts with no clear plan for ending our work together because of our strong partnership and commitment to their success.

We relate to our subcontractors as partners. Since we are a non-traditional, virtual company, and because we are moving fast, our team relationships are essential. We relate to one another as partners, committed to each other’s success and the success of our company as a whole. We relate to each other with kindness, respect, concern, understanding, and patience. We welcome newcomers warmly.

We develop strategic relationships/partnerships with our blogger community (Team Buzz Builder) and beyond. We would not be successful without the bloggers and other influencers who join us in sharing our authors’ work. As often as possible, we seek to forge new collaborative possibilities with the press, radio hosts, conference organizers, communities (Lead Change, Linked2Leadership, Lead With Giants), publishing companies, and more. We are grateful for opportunities to collaborate with these partners.

Tell me something! If you have worked with us as a client, subcontractor, or other partner, how do you see us living out the value of partnership? What could we do to improve in living out this value?